Wednesday 1 Man Utd beat Bordeaux 2-0. “You’ve got to win your home games,” advises Sir Alex. Mark Bosnich, dropped after his leaden-footed display against Wimbledon the previous Saturday, is said to be “fuming”, the poppet.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Mick Slatter looks back at the highs and lows of Africa’s Cup of Nations which ended with Cameroon being crowned champions following a controversial penalty shoot-out
Maybe Victor Ikpeba will wind up wearing a brown paper bag over his head and advertising stuffed-crust pizza (or whatever the Nigerian equivalent might be). But he doesn’t deserve such ridicule. His penalty hit the crossbar and crossed the line. There was no need for video replays or freeze-frames or any other visual jiggery-pokery; it was clearly a goal. But the Tunisian referee saw it differently and his (obscured?) view cost the Super Eagles the African Cup of Nations.
When the Ivory Coast unexpectedly tumbled out of the African Nations Cup at the first hurdle, the military junta took the extraordinary step of jailing the entire squad. Mick Slatter takes up the story
If losing is a crime, then the Ivorians were suitably punished. On arriving home after their elimination, the players and staff had probably expected to encounter nothing more serious than a few disappointed fans and an awkward press conference at the airport. Instead they found themselves imprisoned and their passports confiscated.
Neil Dixe Wills discovers the life and times of Jimmy Seed, through his classic autobiography
“Eventually there will be a soccer League of Nations with clubs flying off to South America in little more time than it would take Newcastle to travel to Plymouth by train. These days may not be realised in my time, but they are coming.” Meet Jimmy Seed: child soldier, double title-winner, leviathan of The Valley and, judging by the statement above, pretty useful soothsayer.
As relegation looms and despair mounts across the land, Ian Plenderleith went online to see how fans of endangered clubs are coping
The season is reaching its zenith, but for some teams it’s more or less over. How are the fans of table-proppers across the leagues coping with despair and defeat with two months of the season still to go?